Periodically I'll switch from live TV to TiVo Central only to be met by the THX and then the TiVo "on stage" videos as if it was just rebooted...and then to TiVo Central.

This happened once in a long while since upgrading our Premiere XL to 2TB using jmfs back in November or so. More recently I'm beginning to see this every other day now.

Now this only happens after turning on our system, TiVo connected to Samsung Plasma via HDMI, watching a bit of live TV, might be for a few seconds or after a half-hour. Sometimes TiVo is idle, other times it's recording on one or both tuners. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason otherwise. After that initial unusual behavior it doesn't happen again...only the first time we turn things on.

It happened a few minutes ago and I decided to have a look at the DVR Diagnostics screens...moved through the menus to DVR Diagnostics and got the "One moment please" and that was it...hung there. Pulled the plug, went back in and found nothing unusual on the diagnostics.

I've also noticed some other odd behaviors such as losing the TiVo backgrounds (we're on the SD menus)...black background after deleting a recording, etc.

In any case, just wondering if anyone else was seeing anything unusual. I've got a WD20EARS on the way from Newegg ($69.99) just in case. Think I'll copy everything over to the new drive to be safe. I'll test the existing EARS to see what comes back. If there aren't any issues I'll put it into backup service.

Now this only happens after turning on our system, TiVo connected to Samsung Plasma via HDMI, watching a bit of live TV, might be for a few seconds or after a half-hour. Sometimes TiVo is idle, other times it's recording on one or both tuners. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason otherwise. After that initial unusual behavior it doesn't happen again...only the first time we turn things on.

Click to expand...

Since you don't turn a TiVo on, you must be referring to the TV. The only way the TiVo can know that you turn the TV on is through the HDMI cable, so it could be some sort of HDMI anomaly. But I don't know how it could be delayed.

It happened a few minutes ago and I decided to have a look at the DVR Diagnostics screens...moved through the menus to DVR Diagnostics and got the "One moment please" and that was it...hung there. Pulled the plug, went back in and found nothing unusual on the diagnostics.

Click to expand...

I had this bit of strangeness with the DVR Diagnostics screen, but it doesn't sound quite the same.

In any case, just wondering if anyone else was seeing anything unusual. I've got a WD20EARS on the way from Newegg ($69.99) just in case. Think I'll copy everything over to the new drive to be safe. I'll test the existing EARS to see what comes back. If there aren't any issues I'll put it into backup service.

Thanks for the link David. It would appear that what I'm seeing is exactly what a lot of others are experiencing with their TiVo Premier's and that it has nothing to do with the 2TB upgrade or my hard drive. Phew! I went ahead and posted my two cents on "TiVo Intro Animation Clip" thread:

The other oddities I've seen before over the years, not just with the Premiere. I chalk it up to TiVo basically being a computer and that these things happen. A hard reboot usually takes care of things when needed.

So did anyone ever figure out how Weeknees is doing their 4TB (2TB internal/2TB external)?

P.S. I know a lot of people on this forum have strong opinions about using external drives, so I just want to clarify that I'm looking for the technical details/replication instructions for Weeknees solution above, not anyone's opinion on external drives.

So did anyone ever figure out how Weeknees is doing their 4TB (2TB internal/2TB external)?

P.S. I know a lot of people on this forum have strong opinions about using external drives, so I just want to clarify that I'm looking for the technical details/replication instructions for Weeknees solution above, not anyone's opinion on external drives.

I saw some people were setting the idle time to 300 (5 minutes), some were leaving it alone. I figured since it is an always on DVR (always recording whatever channel it is tuned to - to the buffer, it should never be parked) Any clarification or reasons why having disabled is bad or (worse than 8, 300, or?? would be appreciated)

For everything other than the original Extended fitness test I dusted off an old Shuttle PC so the drives were directly connected via SATA cables for speed. The XL (1TB) took a bit over 9hrs and the base (320GB) took 3hrs.

...
I saw some people were setting the idle time to 300 (5 minutes), some were leaving it alone. I figured since it is an always on DVR (always recording whatever channel it is tuned to - to the buffer, it should never be parked) Any clarification or reasons why having disabled is bad or (worse than 8, 300, or?? would be appreciated)
...

Click to expand...

Tivo is continuously writing, but I don't know how much of that is cached somewhere, and if the setting of 8 would cause heads to park at all, but it is known that this setting used to cause issues with soft reboots, and if there would be constain parking because of caching, that would be bad, so I was not going to leave it at 8.
I read somewhere (sorry, can't remember where) that setting it to disabled may have caused premature failure for some people (not necessarily in Tivos). I don't know the technical details, so I figured that, in Tivo case, 300 would work OK (i.e. no way caching would last that long), so no particular reason to set it to disabled vs 300.

With the price of 2TB drives dropping under $70 I figured it was time to upgrade my two Tivo premieres (1-XL and 1-base model) to 317 hrs each.<snip>

Click to expand...

Nice work! Thanks for the details as well. With regard to the Intellipark setting, 300 seconds Vs disabled, there were discussions on other forums a while back regarding one or the other possibly having an impact on the drive's longevity. Since the 2TB drives are still fairly new, there's no empirical evidence positive or negative either way. As you point out, TiVo is recording 24/7 and the only time the heads will park is during a reboot, so for our purposes it probably won't make any difference. We have ours set to 300 seconds (five minutes) and things have been working fine for almost a year now.

I want to thank everyone that has put these scripts/apps together. I recently switched to FIOS from DirecTV and could not stand the user interface of the FIOS boxes. I used to have 2 fully hacked direcTV Tivos several years ago and I loved them so I decided to buy a couple of premiers and upgrade them with WD20EARS. I can not believe how simple this is now. widdle, automated 3 step proccess and bam I have 2TB of capacity each. My only problem is on one I can see the other Tivo on the "My Shows" list but when I select it it says there is nothin to display (wich of course there is) and on the second Tivo I can not see the other one at all. I have tested all the network diag and everything checks out. I have rebooted each several times with no luck. I can also stream netflix on both so I am pretty sure it is not a network issue. I did a search but I guess I did not use the right keywords because nothing came up. Any help would be apreciated.

Click to expand...

Just wanted to post what the issue really was on this just in case it saves someone else the days of troubleshooting/testing I went through. The problem was that I was not using a Tivo wireless adapter for my second Tivo. I had a PC and PS3 there also so I bought a another wireless router and configured it in bridge mode. I then just used the 5 ports to plug a cat5 cable in the each. I fugured all would just see it as a cable connection instead of wireless. All worked great except for the Tivo seeing the other Tivo. Anyway I finally broke down and bought another Tivo adapter for this Tivo ($90) and as soon as I configuered and plugged in everything started instantly working. So atleast in my case it apears the only way for home networking to work is to use the Tivo brand wireless adapters.

I can't speak from experience as I have never tried to use wireless connections on a TiVo, but the setup you had before should have worked. I have seen similar, inexplicable problems even in a wired setup but am having no problems with my current configuration where I have 2 TiVos connected to one switch and the other one on another switch. Both of these switches are connected to the switch on the router.

I am a bit confused though. The switch on most routers with which I am familiar only have 4 ports. Your router actually has 6 RJ-45 jacks, 5 on the switch part and one normally used to connect to the modem?

I am a bit confused though. The switch on most routers with which I am familiar only have 4 ports. Your router actually has 6 RJ-45 jacks, 5 on the switch part and one normally used to connect to the modem?

Click to expand...

Sorry I was just using general terms when I said router, I was actualy using a WAP (Wireless Access Point) to create a bridge connection to my router/switch. It does not have a WAN or Modem port. I am pretty sure it has 5 ports on the back (I am not at home to verify) but it could be 4. I just needed the 3 to connect my equipment. The Tivo worked for steaming netflix and guide updates so I am sure that I had it configured properly though the WAP. The thing that lead me to try the Tivo adapter was that I was able to see this Tivo from my Family room Tivo that did have a Tivo adapter already. It would not show anything in the "My Shows" list though. But with the one connected to the WAP I could not even see the other Tivo. Anyway this might have just been a one off circumstance but it is working for me now just cost me an extra $90.

Sounds like the WAP wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. Were both TiVos showing up in your router's DHCP table? Also, there are cheaper alternatives than buying a wireless adapter from TiVo, but if your mind is at ease...

My current house is wired gigabit ethernet but at a previous (rental) house I ran 3 Apple airport extremes for more than 2 years without an issue. One in the office where the cable modem was and the other two in the master bedroom and living room in bridge mode with all the ethernet devices plugged in.

Worked great, my Series 2, Series 3 and Premiere saw a wired network connection and I could transfer shows just fine (only much slower than an actual wired connection)

Also had a Wii (USB ethernet adapter), PS3, XBOX360, a macmini, appleTV and a bluray player connected with the use of a gigabit switch.

Looks like others have had success with what I was trying to accomplish but I tried for over a week and could not get it to work. I am by no means an expert but I have setup several home and small business networks so I feel that I covered the basic configuration options. Yes they both showed up in the DHCP table. I did not try setting up a static IP for either maybe that would have worked. I am curios know to now if anyone was able to get this working with my exact situation (one Premiere using Tivo wireless N adapter other using a Buffalo Technology N150 configured in bridge mode). I am now thinking that maybe using the first Tivo wireless adatper caused me to have to use the second. Maybe I could have bought another Buffalo and it would have worked that way also.

Looks like others have had success with what I was trying to accomplish but I tried for over a week and could not get it to work. I am by no means an expert but I have setup several home and small business networks so I feel that I covered the basic configuration options. Yes they both showed up in the DHCP table. I did not try setting up a static IP for either maybe that would have worked. I am curios know to now if anyone was able to get this working with my exact situation (one Premiere using Tivo wireless N adapter other using a Buffalo Technology N150 configured in bridge mode). I am now thinking that maybe using the first Tivo wireless adatper caused me to have to use the second. Maybe I could have bought another Buffalo and it would have worked that way also.

Click to expand...

I never had your particular brand of network card, but when I switched wireless network cards (from Netgear to Tivo G and again when I upgraded to Tivo N), I had to remove the old adapter and reboot the Tivo before plugging in the new adapter (not sure if I had to reboot it again after that to make it work).

I would definitely recommend using a static IP over DHCP.

Even though it is way more expensive (the best deals seem to be on Ebay), I think the Tivo N adapter is well worth it for three reasons:

1) You have to use it (or the old Tivo G) if you want to use WPA2 only encryption on the wireless network (the latest and greatest) and I like my wireless network to be secure
2) If you have a router that supports it, the Tivo N adapter support the less crowded 5 Ghz band, which made a lot of difference with Netflix streaming issues I had (I had tried all the channels on the 2.4 Ghz band with my old Tivo G network card)
3) The biggest thing that I didn't know when I originally bought a non-Tivo network adapter (Netgear) is that the Tivo network adapter is specifically designed to do all the networking and offloading it from the Tivo (not sure if this would be the equivalent of TOE in servers), so it doesn't slow the Tivo down. Thus you get better network communication and don't affect your Tivo performance.

I didn't use a true static IP address but I did reserve a specific IP address in my DHCP router table based on the devices MAC. This way I always knew what IP each device would have on my network with much less configuration.

I hate it when a seemingly solid idea doesn't work!
I have had nothing but trouble since 14.8U2 went on my upgraded Premiere XL with a WDC 2TB Green drive, I've posted in other threads that I can not get kickstart codes to work, so I did what any decent techie would do, tested out some additional drives.

I had a spare Seagate 1.5TB LP drive sitting around, used JMFS to update from the original 1TB, and tested, the drive and the Premiere work ok, but since it wasn't full I couldn't tell if my reboots were resolved, and 1.5TB isn't enough space, so I had 2x 2TB Seagate ST2000DL003 5900RPM drives in the house (don't ask) and I thought that could resolve my question as to if it's 14.8U2 or the drive.

So I first copied the WDC 2TB to the Seagate with JMFS, that didn't work, the drive just hung, I thought I remembered something about supposedly not copying expanded drives, and it's no big loss and I formatted the drive and then went back and wiped it in a Windows 7 box without thinking, and I think it wrote a drive signature, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Then I copied the OEM 1TB drive to the now blank Seagate 2TB and I just have a reboot loop. Even though the JMFS process formats the drive, did that windows signature cause my reboot issues? and is there a good way with the JMFS CD to nuke the drive completely to be sure I do it right when I try again tomorrow?